The Washington Post is reporting that the US Customs and Border Protection agency is seizing and copying cell phone, tablet, and computer data from “as many as” 10,000 phones per year, including an unspecified number of American citizens. This is done without a warrant, because “…courts have long granted an exception to border authorities, allowing … Read More “Large-Scale Collection of Cell Phone Data at US Borders” »
Category: surveillance
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TheMarkup has an extensive analysis of connected vehicle data and the companies that are collecting it. The Markup has identified 37 companies that are part of the rapidly growing connected vehicle data industry that seeks to monetize such data in an environment with few regulations governing its sale or use. While many of these companies … Read More “Surveillance of Your Car” »
Amazon has revealed that it gives police videos from its Ring doorbells without a warrant and without user consent. Ring recently revealed how often the answer to that question has been yes. The Amazon company responded to an inquiry from US Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.), confirming that there have been 11 cases in 2022 where … Read More “Ring Gives Videos to Police without a Warrant or User Consent” »
Surely no one could have predicted this: The new proposal—championed by Mayor London Breed after November’s wild weekend of orchestrated burglaries and theft in the San Francisco Bay Area—would authorize the police department to use non-city-owned security cameras and camera networks to live monitor “significant events with public safety concerns” and ongoing felony or misdemeanor … Read More “San Francisco Police Want Real-Time Access to Private Surveillance Cameras” »
This is an excellent essay outlining the post-Roe privacy threat model. (Summary: period tracking apps are largely a red herring.) Taken together, this means the primary digital threat for people who take abortion pills is the actual evidence of intention stored on your phone, in the form of texts, emails, and search/web history. Cynthia Conti-Cook’s … Read More “Post-Roe Privacy” »
Report by Georgetown’s Center on Privacy and Technology published a comprehensive report on the surprising amount of mass surveillance conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Our two-year investigation, including hundreds of Freedom of Information Act requests and a comprehensive review of ICE’s contracting and procurement records, reveals that ICE now operates as a domestic … Read More “Ubiquitous Surveillance by ICE” »
San Francisco police are using autonomous vehicles as mobile surveillance cameras. Privacy advocates say the revelation that police are actively using AV footage is cause for alarm. “This is very concerning,” Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) senior staff attorney Adam Schwartz told Motherboard. He said cars in general are troves of personal consumer data, but autonomous … Read More “Surveillance by Driverless Car” »
Georgetown has a new report on the highly secretive bulk surveillance activities of ICE in the US: When you think about government surveillance in the United States, you likely think of the National Security Agency or the FBI. You might even think of a powerful police agency, such as the New York Police Department. But … Read More “ICE Is a Domestic Surveillance Agency” »
FinFisher has shut down operations. This is the spyware company whose products were used, among other things, to spy on Turkish and Bahraini political opposition. Powered by WPeMatico
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” »