A GROUP OF human rights lawyers and investigators called on the Hague this week to bring what would be the first ever “cyber war crimes” charges. The group is urging the International Criminal Court to bring charges against the dangerous and destructive Russian hacking group known as Sandworm, which is run by Russia’s military intelligence agency GRU. Meanwhile, activists are working to block Russia from using satellites controlled by the French company Eutelsat to broadcast its state-run propaganda programming.

The inside story of the world’s most notorious commercial spyware and the big tech companies waging war against it.

The Internal Revenue Service has announced that it will transition away from the use of third-party facial recognition services for the verification of taxpayers’ identities, effectively ending a contract with facial recognition company ID.me that had received widespread criticism.

Federal and state governments are turning to a facial recognition company to ensure that people accessing services are who they say they are. The move promises to cut down on fraud, but at what cost?

The Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are reportedly looking for alternatives to the controversial facial recognition software ID.me, according to a report by Bloomberg. As Bloomberg notes, the agencies didn’t cite a reason for the possible change, and also didn’t mention any privacy concerns about the service.

A group of U.S. lawmakers is asking the Treasury Department and State Department to sanction Israeli spyware firm NSO Group and three other foreign surveillance companies they say helped authoritarian governments commit human rights abuses.

The Israeli military has deployed an extensive facial recognition program to track Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to a new report by The Washington Post. Former Israeli soldiers told the Post about a smartphone technology called “Blue Wolf,” which takes photos of Palestinians and stores them in a large-scale database. Once an image is captured, Blue Wolf matches that picture to a person in its database, and as the Post describes, soldiers’ phones will then flash a specific color that signifies if that individual should be arrested, detained, or left undisturbed.

Facebook this week announced that it will no longer deploy facial recognition technologies on its platform, but the social network's parent company, Meta, said that the commitment does not apply to its metaverse products

Client-side scanning, as the technology is called, should really be treated like wiretapping and regulated accordingly

Privacy campaigners bid to beat police facial recognition plans by wearing ‘dazzle’ makeup

Microsoft, Google, Facebook and other tech firms are pressing lawmakers to enact new rules to stop prosecutors from secretly snooping on private messages, photos, search history and more.

Julian Assange warned the public that the goal in Afghanistan "is to have an endless war, not a successful war."

Singapore has started trials of robots to patrol public areas and deter poor social behaviour, in its latest effort to further augment its strong portfolio of surveillance tools.

The Government Accountability Office has revealed in a new report that 10 federal agencies are planning to expand their use of facial recognition. In a survey involving 24 federal agencies on their use of facial recognition technology, the Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Interior, Justice, State, Treasury and Veterans Affairs departments told GAO that they're planning to use facial recognition in more areas through fiscal year 2023.

One of the many worrying developments in the tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan is that US face recognition and fingerprint devices and databases have been seized by the Taliban. They were apparently left behind during the hurried withdrawal of US forces, leaving coalition collaborators at risk from reprisals.

You're not just on camera, you're also being tracked

We may be stepping into a world in which we are all spies - and at the same time are all spied on.

A Motherboard investigation found that ShotSpotter frequently generates false alerts—and it's deployed almost exclusively in non-white neighborhoods.

NSA whistleblower warns of world in which no phone is safe from state-sponsored hackers if no action taken

Pretty interesting predictions.