This is a big deal. A US Appeals Court ruled that geofence warrants—these are general warrants demanding information about all people within a geographical boundary—are unconstitutional. The decision seems obvious to me, but you can’t take anything for granted. Powered by WPeMatico
Category: geolocation
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Brian Krebs reports on research into geolocating routers: Apple and the satellite-based broadband service Starlink each recently took steps to address new research into the potential security and privacy implications of how their services geolocate devices. Researchers from the University of Maryland say they relied on publicly available data from Apple to track the location … Read More “Privacy Implications of Tracking Wireless Access Points” »
The ProtonMail people are accusing Microsoft’s new Outlook for Windows app of conducting extensive surveillance on its users. It shares data with advertisers, a lot of data: The window informs users that Microsoft and those 801 third parties use their data for a number of purposes, including to: Store and/or access information on the user’s … Read More “Surveillance by the New Microsoft Outlook App” »
Wow: To test PIGEON’s performance, I gave it five personal photos from a trip I took across America years ago, none of which have been published online. Some photos were snapped in cities, but a few were taken in places nowhere near roads or other easily recognizable landmarks. That didn’t seem to matter much. It … Read More “AI Is Scarily Good at Guessing the Location of Random Photos” »
Google Maps now stores location data locally on your device, meaning that Google no longer has that data to turn over to the police. Powered by WPeMatico
The French police are getting new surveillance powers: French police should be able to spy on suspects by remotely activating the camera, microphone and GPS of their phones and other devices, lawmakers agreed late on Wednesday, July 5. […] Covering laptops, cars and other connected objects as well as phones, the measure would allow the … Read More “French Police Will Be Able to Spy on People through Their Cell Phones” »
The two people who shut down four Washington power stations in December were arrested. This is the interesting part: Investigators identified Greenwood and Crahan almost immediately after the attacks took place by using cell phone data that allegedly showed both men in the vicinity of all four substations, according to court documents. Nowadays, it seems … Read More “Identifying People Using Cell Phone Location Data” »
Depending on where you are when you download your Android apps, it might collect more or less data about you. The apps we downloaded from Google Play also showed differences based on country in their security and privacy capabilities. One hundred twenty-seven apps varied in what the apps were allowed to access on users’ mobile … Read More “Differences in App Security/Privacy Based on Country” »
The malicious uses of these technologies are scary: Police reportedly arrived on the scene last week and found the man crouched beside the woman’s passenger side door. According to the police, the man had, at some point, wrapped his Apple Watch across the spokes of the woman’s passenger side front car wheel and then used … Read More “Stalking with an Apple Watch” »
A German activist is trying to track down a secret government intelligence agency. One of her research techniques is to mail Apple AirTags to see where they actually end up: Wittmann says that everyone she spoke to denied being part of this intelligence agency. But what she describes as a “good indicator,” would be if … Read More “Tracking Secret German Organizations with Apple AirTags” »