Shop Safe This Holiday Season
Mozila: “Teddy bears that connect to the internet. Smart speakers that listen to commands. Great gifts—unless they spy on you. We created this guide to help you buy safe, secure products this holiday season.”
Category «Privacy»
Holochain – energy efficient post-blockchain ledger system and decentralized application platform
Joe Hodnick – “Holochain is a protocol for encrypted computer communications that is designed to run entirely on distributed networks of home computers and smartphones, on a peer-to-peer, give-and-take basis. Because apps built using the holochain protocol will live exclusively on distributed networks of consumer-owned computers, these apps won’t need to interact with corporate server …
Google outage pushed traffic through Russia, China and Nigeria
CNet – Traffic got rerouted Monday through ISPs in countries known for internet surveillance. “Google suffered a brief outage and slowdown on Monday, with some of its traffic being rerouted through networks in Russia, China and Nigeria. Incorrect routing instructions sent some of the search giant’s traffic to Russian network operator TransTelekom, China Telecom and …
We should all worry about corporate control of data
The Next Web: “The information age has delivered innumerable wonders to us and continues to churn out astonishing innovations on a daily basis. The only reason that contemporary society enjoys such awesome technology and progress these days is that we can gleam so much insight from our data, particularly when we combine disparate datasets together …
DEA and ICE are hiding surveillance cameras in streetlights
Quartz: “The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have hidden an undisclosed number of covert surveillance cameras inside streetlights around the country, federal contracting documents reveal. According to government procurement data, the DEA has paid a Houston, Texas company called Cowboy Streetlight Concealments LLC roughly $22,000 since June 2018 for “video …
Why Social Media’s Misinformation Problem Will Never Be Fixed
Slate – Facebook and others have gotten more serious about hoaxes, hate speech, propaganda, and foreign election interference. Here’s how it helped in the midterms—and why they aren’t going away. “At first grimace, the role of social media in the 2018 U.S. midterm elections looked a lot like the role it played in the 2016, …
Paper – Browser history re :visited
Browser history re:visited. Michael Smith, Craig Disselkoen. Shravan Narayan, Fraser Brown, Deian Stefan. Abstract – “We present four new history sniffing attacks. Our attacks fit into two classical categories—visited-link attacks and cache-based attacks—but abuse new, modern browser features (e.g., the CSS Paint API and JavaScript bytecode cache) that do not account for privacy when handling …
Wyden Releases Discussion Draft of Legislation to Provide Real Protections for Americans’ Privacy
Bill Requires Radical Transparency About How Corporations Share, Sell and Use Your Data; Creates Tough Penalties and Jail Time for Executives – “Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., released a discussion draft of sweeping new legislation that would empower consumers to control their personal information, create radical transparency into how corporations use and share their data, and …
Massive Project That’s Building a ‘Google Earth for Human Health’
SingularityHub: “In the medical study Hall of Fame, the Framingham Heart Study takes the throne. An ongoing project that’s spanned three generations and almost 70 years, the Heart study was an early attempt to track factors and behaviors that increase heart disease risks. Find and eliminate the culprits, lower a population’s chances of dying from …
2018 US congressional midterm elections: case study of third-party tracking scripts on candidate websites
The 2018 United States congressional midterm elections: a case study of third-party tracking scripts on candidate websites, Valmik Patel, October 2018. “Of the 1,008 websites we collected (House and Senate candidates for the 2018 midterm elections), we were left with 981 after removing duplicates and invalid links. We found that trackers are present on 87% …
The Government Must Now Obtain A Warrant To Compel Disclosure of Cell Phone Location Records
New on LLRX – The Government Must Now Obtain A Warrant To Compel Disclosure of Cell Phone Location Records – Attorney Charles Holster discusses the ramifications of the June 22, 2018 Supreme Court decision, Carpenter v. United States that held a warrant is required before a wireless telephone service provider may be compelled by a governmental …
Comparison of Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo
Business Insider: “Switching your search engine is not something to be taken lightly — it’s our internet lifeblood. We rely daily on algorithms we don’t understand to surface the exact article we’re looking for. And if for some reason it’s not at the top of our results — even if the search we entered was …
