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+25 +1
How U.S. surveillance technology is propping up authoritarian regimes
NSO Group, an Israeli cyberintelligence firm, makes spyware that it sells to a variety of government clients around the world. It has denied that those surveillance products were involved in the torture and murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, although it has neither confirmed nor denied selling its products to the Saudi government — elements of which, the CIA has concluded, ordered the killing.
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+19 +1
'The goal is to automate us': welcome to the age of surveillance capitalism
Shoshana Zuboff’s new book is a chilling exposé of the business model that underpins the digital world. Observer tech columnist John Naughton explains the importance of Zuboff’s work and asks the author 10 key questions.
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+19 +1
How sloppy OPSEC gave researchers an inside look at the exploit industry
New information from Lookout has given the public unique insights into how nation-states buy and develop surveillance exploits. By Greg Otto.
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+27 +1
China blocks 17.5 million plane tickets for people without enough 'social credit'
The Chinese government blocked 17.5 million would-be plane passengers from buying tickets last year as a punishment for offences including the failure to pay fines, it emerged. Some 5.5 million people were also barred from travelling by train under a controversial “social credit” system which the ruling Communist Party claims will improve public behaviour. The penalties are part of efforts by president Xi Jinping‘s government to use data-processing and other technology to tighten control on society.
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+22 +1
Disputed N.S.A. Phone Program Is Shut Down, Aide Says
The National Security Agency has quietly shut down a system that analyzes logs of Americans’ domestic calls and texts, according to a senior Republican congressional aide, halting a program that has touched off disputes about privacy and the rule of law since the Sept. 11 attacks. The agency has not used the system in months, and the Trump administration might not ask Congress to renew its legal authority, which is set to expire at the end of the year, according to the aide, Luke Murry, the House minority leader’s national security adviser.
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+13 +1
DEA Never Checked If Its Massive Surveillance Operations Are Legal, Watchdog Says
The Drug Enforcement Administration skirted numerous legal checks on a trio of bulk data collection programs dating back to the early 1990s, according to an internal watchdog. In a heavily redacted, 144-page report published Thursday, the Justice Department Inspector General revealed the administration failed to fully assess the legal basis for three massive international surveillance operations that ran largely unchecked from 1992 to 2013. Two of the programs remain active in some form today.
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+4 +1
China's Social Credit System – It's Coming To The United States Soon
Chinese officials say that by 2020, the SCS will “allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven...while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step..."
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+35 +1
Chinese province deploys real-time GPS trackers to monitor workers
Sanitation workers in China say they are being forced to wear GPS trackers in the latest report detailing the nation’s growing dystopia. According to a local news source, the trackers were is…
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+24 +1
Made in China, Exported to the World: The Surveillance State
In Ecuador, cameras capture footage to be examined by police and domestic intelligence. The surveillance system’s origin: China.
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+17 +1
NSA Recommends Dropping Phone-Surveillance Program
The National Security Agency has recommended that the White House abandon a U.S. surveillance program that collects information about Americans’ phone calls and text messages, saying the logistical and legal burdens of keeping it outweigh its intelligence benefits.
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+3 +1
None of Your Business
Silicon Valley firms don’t want to simply monitor your behavior; they plan to shape it, too. By Katie Fitzpatrick.
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+9 +1
San Francisco Bans Facial Recognition Technology
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday enacted the first ban by a major city on the use of facial recognition technology by police and all other municipal agencies. The vote was 8 to 1 in favor, with two members who support the bill absent. There will be an obligatory second vote next week, but it is seen as a formality.
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+7 +1
As surveillance culture grows, can we even hope to escape its reach?
Sometimes, it is the very ordinariness of a scene that makes it terrifying. So it was with a clip from last week’s BBC documentary on facial recognition technology. It shows the Metropolitan police trialling a facial recognition system on an east London street. A man tries to avoid the cameras, covering his face by pulling up his fleece. He is stopped by the police and forced to have his photo taken. He is then fined £90 for “disorderly behaviour”.
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+9 +1
Massachusetts Can Become a National Leader to Stop Face Surveillance
Massachusetts has a long history of standing up for liberty. Right now, it has the opportunity to become a national leader in fighting invasive government surveillance. Lawmakers need to hear from the people of Massachusetts to say they oppose government use of face surveillance.
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+3 +1
NSA improperly collected Americans’ phone records for a second time, documents reveal
Newly released documents reveal the National Security Agency improperly collected Americans’ call records for a second time, just months after the agency was forced to purge hundreds of millions of collected calls and text records it unlawfully obtained. The document, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, shows the NSA had collected a “larger than expected” number of call detail records from one of the U.S. phone providers, though the redacted document did not reveal which provider nor how many records were improperly collected.
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+2 +1
China Is Forcing Tourists to Install Text-Stealing Malware at its Border
The malware downloads a tourist’s text messages, calendar entries, and phone logs, as well as scans the device for over 70,000 different files.
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+23 +1
This Tesla Mod Turns a Model S Into a Mobile 'Surveillance Station'
AUTOMATIC LICENSE PLATE reader cameras are controversial enough when law enforcement deploys them, given that they can create a panopticon of transit throughout a city. Now one hacker has found a way to put a sample of that power—for safety, he says, and for surveillance—into the hands of anyone with a Tesla and a few hundred dollars to spare.
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+4 +1
Amazon Is Looking More and More Like a Nation-State
Most politicians don’t understand how to confront Amazon’s market power. The most recent example is in France, where last month a decision was made to levy a 3 percent tax on Big Tech firms with global revenues higher than €750 million (~$830 million) and French revenues exceeding €25 million.
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+10 +1
'They wanted me gone': Edward Snowden tells of whistleblowing, his AI fears and six years in Russia
The man whose state surveillance revelations rocked the world speaks exclusively to the Guardian about his new life and concerns for the future. The world’s most famous whistleblower, Edward Snowden, says he has detected a softening in public hostility towards him in the US over his disclosure of top-secret documents that revealed the extent of the global surveillance programmes run by American and British spy agencies.
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+3 +1
Live facial recognition surveillance 'must stop'
UK police and companies must stop using live facial recognition for public surveillance, politicians and campaigners have said. The technology allows faces captured on CCTV to be checked in real time against watch lists, often compiled by police. Privacy campaigners say it is inaccurate, intrusive and infringes on an individual's right to privacy.
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